The pro-life—and I use pro-life since that’s how they self-identify and I think semantics games based on propaganda-style labeling to be stupid and childish—group (Bears for Life) here at Missouri State University decided to once again do their “graveyard of the innocent” deal this year. Last year we handed out condoms and performed free abortions in protest of their misguided, ill-informed crusade against a woman’s body, but alas this year we had important learning shit to do and Brother Jed was on campus.
Plus we've been sexying it up quite a bit since then.
Plus, true to the religiously motivated protests or evangelicals on campus, they never can come up with new material. It’s the same midget popsicle stick crosses as last year. I will give them credit though, unlike last year where their signs were absolute made up horseshit that didn’t even make sense, they stuck to numbers this year. I didn’t bother to check the accuracy of how many abortions they claim take place, but I figure it’s pretty irrelevant. They simply want to scare you with large numbers.
There’s no information present, nothing there that could actually prevent an unwanted pregnancy. They just want to change a law that their religion doesn’t like without any thought to the consequences. Quite frankly, if you’re not willing to encourage the use of birth control—especially if you’re going by the encyclical reasoning that using birth control doesn’t respect the woman because it lessens the chance of her getting pregnant (wonder why we shouldn’t listen to old, supposedly celibate men on issues of human sexuality?)—then you really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to abortion. I’m not a big fan of the procedure either and I don’t think many people would encourage an abortion if it could be avoided by any other means. A condom has a lot lower health risk than a surgical procedure.
Still, you’ve probably heard most of the above before and it’s really not news. The issue I’d like to focus on is the fact that they use the cross, exclusively. While a cross is a common symbol of the dead, so is a large slab of rock. The use of a cross as their icon causes problems for their crusade. First of all, if we grant that the parents’ religion is genetically passed on to fetuses, then the only abortion they’re protesting is abortion done by Christian parents. That’s great news for us communist, atheist, baby-killers who love to bath in the blood of the unborn. We’re off the hook. The other problem is that the use of crosses speaks to their motivations. Their anti-abortion stance is religiously created. They didn’t come to their stance through logical (insert your methodology of choice here if you so prefer) means based on empirical evidence or rational discourse. What ‘facts’ they do have are cherry picked to conform to the religious dogma that forms the base of their stance. The problem with constructing the argument from a non-secular base is that you can’t claim a secular motivation. Without a secular structure, you simply can’t defend the stance.
The fact that they’re okay with using crosses speaks to the makeup of the group as well. Looking out at such a display you can quickly assume that it was put together by a largely Christian group and didn’t have much minority representation. I’d be a little more likely to consider this a demonstration of Christian Privilege in America, except that the group is, to the best of my knowledge, completely Christian and thus can use whatever symbol they choose without alienating other members. Granted, it won’t help them in the cause of recruiting outside their faith, but that’s not much of a concern for them; but it does speak to the fact that they don’t care about any other reasons for opposing abortion outside of their faith based perspective.
Tags: abortion, Bears for Life, Brother Jed, Christian, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Crosses, MSU
